


Their Father Was An Adventurer

by Mothfluff



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), Vox Machina - Fandom
Genre: Character Study, Percy is content making art and never needing a weapon again, Post-Campaign, his legacy is more than just his guns and his fights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 22:32:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12714153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mothfluff/pseuds/Mothfluff
Summary: Their father was an adventurer, apparently. A hero, even. A master of daring fights and daunting trials.They knew vague stories, distorted by time and re-telling in taverns and across courtyards. They sometimes heard, at the most important balls and events, the various titles that were added onto the already long list of royal names and decrees. They looked foward to the annual display of the watchtower, their eyes pinned onto the figures, mostly on the dark-haired elven girl with blue feathers behind her ear, and the white-haired man in his fluttering blue coat – such familiar items to them, yet in such an unknown setting, as the figures danced and darted around mechanical dragons and the undead god.Their father had been an adventurer, but it was hard to believe.~He was not an adventurer in his children's eyes, and he didn't mind.





	Their Father Was An Adventurer

Their father was an adventurer, apparently. A hero, even. A master of daring fights and daunting trials.

They knew vague stories, distorted by time and re-telling in taverns and across courtyards. They sometimes heard, at the most important balls and events, the various titles that were added onto the already long list of royal names and decrees. They looked foward to the annual display of the watchtower, their eyes pinned onto the figures, mostly on the dark-haired elven girl with blue feathers behind her ear, and the white-haired man in his fluttering blue coat – such familiar items to them, yet in such an unknown setting, as the figures danced and darted around mechanical dragons and the undead god.

Their father had been an adventurer, but it was hard to believe.

 

Their mother, of course. She was an adventurer still, during the Grey Hunt, during their trips through the forests, during the training of the guard she oversaw. While a few silver streaks were already making their way through her thick black braid, she was daring and fierce and always eager to pounce. It wasn't difficult to imagine her in her youth, with a grin on her mouth and fire in her eyes. She'd told them stories, mostly to caution them of the world's dangers, partially to teach them to be wiser if it ever came to happen for themselves. Their father had crept up in these stories as well, as the saving hero in some, as the smart planner in others.

But an adventurer?

 

They tried to see it. They watched him,looking for signs of past feats and abilities. It just didn't fit.

He was too quiet. Too calm. The one they came to when they just needed to sit, in comfort, in silence away from the loud outside, watching him tinker down in his workshop, or reading a book beside his desk as he worked on the many, many papers that always piled up in the royal office of Whitestone.

An occasional, soft stroke through their hair, just as dark as their mother's. A careful grip around their waist as they were lifted onto his lap, to show them whatever small contraption he was working on at the moment and explain to them, in a soft, low voice how it functioned.

His hands weren't those of a fighter. They were strong, sure, they could grab fast and tight when someone tripped, but they just as easily fluttered through hair to make braids – not as well as Mama's, though, even he had to admit. They were tinkering hands, made for tools, not weapons. The silver sword leant mostly forgotten in a corner of the treasury. (He had taken great care to never let any of them see the mysterious, small, rifle-like weapon he kept hidden in his nightstand, nor let anyone open the locked trunk hidden even deeper in the treasury.)

 

Their father was a thinker, a planner, maybe even a strategist – they'd seen him at work, during meetings they were not supposed to be at, but every one of them knew that little cabinet with the hole in the back that was almost empty and no one ever looked into when preparing the room for a council.

He was quick, and witty, and even cunning at times. Was that what he had brought to the table when he was a member of one of the most famous group of adventurers Tal'Dorei had ever seen? Not his strength, or energy, but his intelligence? Was that enough to make him an adventurer?

 

A true adventurer, in their eyes, was someone who faced death and laughed at it. Someone who stared down great evil without flinching, who knew how to fight and kill any monster without hesitation. An adventurer had many things to boast about, and skills and strength enough to prove it were they ever questioned. Like their uncles, one who still fought – and won – simply for the joy of it, one who still travelled to face dangers and help the innocent with his brigade, and one who would never tire of telling them about his many adventures with their parents. Like their aunts, who were far more quiet, but showed their fabled abilities every day, healing their cuts and scrapes, shaping entire branches for them to climb, teaching them how to fight with both their hands and their words.

Not like their father, with his books and watches, who barely even raised his voice when faced with their worst misbehaviours.

 

Elaina, the eldest, maybe understood it a bit better. She'd seen the scars covering his chest, a few times by accident, and once quite thoroughly, when she'd dared to ask him about it. His voice was as soft and calm as it always was when he showed her, and explained that there had been pain in his past, and dangers that he sometimes miscalculated, and that scars were simply a memory of all the obstacles one had bested and overcome in their life. It was one of the few times, she remembered, when she'd seen something akin to fear in her father's eyes and heard a slight stammer in his otherwise steady speech.

 

He was not an adventurer in his children's eyes, and he didn't mind. He was quite content with them not knowing the true dangers and monsters that lurked in his past. They knew the story of the Briarwoods, if only to understand their own importance and the hope and happiness they'd brought to the quiet castle they called home. They knew nothing beyond that, nothing of the doctors and demons and dreams that had haunted him for so long. What for? There was no use for it as a cautionary tale like their mother's stories, and there was no reason for it to be told other than to carelessly frighten them. And that, he would never even think of doing – and would be more than willing to forcefully stop anyone else trying to do so.

 

Their father had been an adventurer, but not in their lifetime. For them, he was nothing more than Papa, who made unfunny jokes and gave surprisingly good advice, who built them toys and trinkets, who held them tight when they crawled under his sheets after a nightmare, who embarassed them by stealing kisses from Mama at inappropriate times, who read them stories and fairytales of other adventurers and their dangerous lives.

And that was all he ever wanted to be.

 

**Author's Note:**

> alternative title: "I've managed to write an entire drabble without even using any of the canon characters names once"
> 
> (I just love the idea of Percy getting the calm, uneventful family life he had forcefully taken from him in his youth)


End file.
